opera and concerts in london and beyond

Die Tote Stadt

29 January 2009

I'd been looking forward to this premiere. 90 years after it was written, 5 years after this particular production premiered in Salzburg (hay, even scenery-applauding San Francisco got there first), the Royal Opera House finally took the plunge and brought us Die tote Stadt for the very first time.

And though it wasn't a horrendous disaster - far from it - there were some major disappointments all round.

Firstly the production itself. Willy Decker's manic off-kilter dreamworld (rehearsal pics here) is immaculately realised. But I saw this production in Vienna last year, and his bold surrealistic tableaux had far less impact the second time round. Once you know what to expect, the illusion of a waking dream where anything is possible starts to crumble. The images are still striking, but the whole is less convincing.

There were many good things about Ingo Metzmacher's conducting. The Royal Opera House orchestra were immaculately prepared, the sound light and translucent. The singers could be heard above the dense orchestration (not something that could be said about Philippe Auguin's Viennese efforts), details came across clearly, even quieter instruments like the celesta had room to breathe. Caesuras were brilliantly placed and literally breathtaking. The rare shards of modernism spiking the lush romanticism were shaped to shock.

But this music needs passion and abandon. It should teeter on the brink of over-the-topness. Without that, it sinks into slush with every tonal chord. And it seemed Ingo Metzmacher didn't believe in the music quite strongly enough to push that extra inch.

Not a charge you could level at Stephen Gould. Paul is on stage the whole time, mostly singing at the top of his range over a big orchestra. Not an easy part then, but he gave a committed and energetic performance, choppy at first, but vastly improved by the end.

And a big plus - he has an indefinable likeability that eludes most heldentenors. He's a big beefy guy with a voice to match - but - it's big but time (heheh) - it's a voice that needs a sword in the hand to convince. For all its technical demands, Paul is a romantic role not a heroic one, and Stephen Gould never quite tugged on the heartstrings.

Nadja Michael, flinging her long limbs this way and that, certainly looked the glamorous part of Marie/Marietta, and in the comfortable centre of her range, her voice has the sort of steely power that removes limescale without scrubbing. But it's about as alluring as Harriet Harman however much her looks say otherwise - a less beguiling Glück, das mir verblieb is hard to imagine. Up top, where much of the role sits, she thins out and slips below the the note in a truly excruciating fashion, and for bonus ouch points, she has a couple of scarily blokey Amanda Lear notes at the bottom.

Step forward saviour of the evening, Gerald Finley, whose Frank/Fritz was quite perfect in every way. Noble as Frank, admirably deranged as Fritz, he provided a much-needed dose of humanity. And although Brigitta is not a large part, Kathleen Wilkinson made it her own with her endearingly fussy solicitude.

It was a surprise to see a near-full house - Covent Garden audiences are usually wary of anything new - but the muted applause said it all. An opportunity missed.

09 January 2009

As the London concert scene awakes from its festive slumber, evenings are once more full of Things To Go To. Here is a selection of what's happening in January

There are two premieres at the Royal Opera House. Willy Decker's much-travelled Die tote Stadt, which I caught last year in Vienna, opens on 27 January 2009. Still plenty of tickets left - be warned that the mise en abîme staging is largely performed in a kind of box upstage, and may not be fully visible from some side seats.

This year's annual Britten production is The Beggar’s Opera, in the Linbury Studio from 20 January. The cast includes Tom Randle and Susan Bickley; Christian Curnyn conducts. It's currently sold out, though as ever, seats may 'appear' later. Avoid side seats towards the front, where the sound is abysmal.

In an appealing ballet triple bill, the separated-at-birth Martha Wainwright and Zenaida Yanowsky return from 31 January for Kurt Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins. Mats Ek’s Carmen and Christopher Wheeldon’s frenetic DGV, set to Michael Nyman's music, complete an evening that should attract music lovers as well as ballet fans.

The English National Opera's January is yet another month of ballet, but Nicholas Hytner's enduring Magic Flute returns on 24 January with Roderick Williams as Papageno and Robert Lloyd as Sarastro.

The Barbican's year sets off to a cracking start. One of the early highlights is Haydn's Creation with Thomas Quasthoff and the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra conducted by René Jacobs on 10 January.

Sir Colin Davis conducts the LSO in Verdi'sRequiem on 11 and 14 January, with soloists Christine Brewer, Larissa Diadkova, Stuart Neill and John Relyea. (There's another opportunity to hear it at the Royal Opera House on 13 March, this time with Pappano conducting.)

Lock up your grannies on 17 January - the BBC Symphony Orchestra celebrate the genius of Stockhausen with a whole Stockhausen day - a 12 hour programme of films, talks and concerts.

Gergiev cools his heels in London for a few more days to conduct the visiting Mariinsky Theatre in three performances from 30 January. Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades, Rubinstein's The Demon and Smelkov's new The Brothers Karamazov are on the menu - here's a video of the latter, which premiered in Russia last year.

On 27 January Rachel Podger joins the OAE in the Queen Elizabeth Hall for bill of Bach and Telemann. But skip that for the 10pm bargain Night Shift concert, which repeats some of the earlier programme and adds a few extras on top - tickets £8, drinks allowed, and a more laid-back atmosphere all round.

At Wigmore Hall, tomorrow, 9 January, Alice Coote and Paul Nilon tackle Mahler with Mark Elder. For spring, there's a focus on vocal music, and 11 January sees the first of a series of Sunday 4pm concerts featuring young British-based singers, all at a bargain £12 price. This one has Anna Grevelius, Anna Leese, Andrew Staples and Jacques Imbrailo. Emma Bell and Lucy Crowe appear later on in the series

19 September 2008

Barely a week into the new season at Covent Garden, and already we're being asked to whip out our Amexes again, this time for November to March productions. Booking opens this week for those who've paid for the privilege, and next month for the common herd.

Rolando Villazón fights through miles of curtain fabric to reprise his Covent Garden debut role in Les Contes d'Hoffmann. Antonio Pappano conducts the elaborate John Schlesinger production, inching ever closer to its sell-by date. Ekaterina Lekhina (Olympia) is a new name to me, but Gidon Saks, Kristine Jepson and Christine Rice promise sturdy support (photo: Clive Barda).

Rolando also submits to a live interview on 10 November. Space is limited, so early booking advised.

The other star vehicle of the season is a new Tim Albery production of Der fliegende Holländer with (cancelitis permitting) Bryn Terfel in the title role. Anja Kampe makes an overdue ROH debut as Senta. Tickets will be restricted to two per customer for this one.

Britten's The Beggar's Opera pops up in the Linbury Studio. The new production by Justin Way (not by conductor Richard Hickox as the website currently claims - there are limits to his talents) is likely to be popular, so again, early booking advised. The excellent and underused Tom Randle is Macheath.

The brilliant Willy Decker production of Korngold's Die tote Stadt that I caught in Vienna finally makes its way to London. Unfortunately Klaus Florian Vogt and Angela Denoke aren't coming with it, but Stephen Gould and Nadja Michael should be a more than passable substitute. And there's the bonus of Gerald Finley in the smaller role of Frank.

David McVicar's t1ts'n'todgersRigoletto returns with indecent haste. Francesco Meli, Leo Nucci, Ekaterina Siurina and Kurt Rydl are amongst the few cast members who get to keep their clothes on.

Elektra isn't illuminated by Charles Edwards's jumbled production, but with Mark Elder in the pit and a cast that includes Susan Bullock, Anne Schwanewilms, Jane Henschel and Johan Reuter it should at least push some musical buttons.

Even I can't get excited about yet another Turandot revival, but include it for the sake of completeness.

On the ballet side, I have to recommend the triple bill The Seven Deadly Sins / Carmen / DGV: Danse à grande vitesse, especially for the first of these and its wonderful music. Chanteuse Martha Wainwright returns to sing Weill's evocative music, and Zenaida Yanowsky is her dancing doppelganger (photo: John Ross).

I prepped myself with an afternoon at the Jewish Museum's Korngolds exhibition, which looks at Erich Korngold's career with a particular emphasis on his father Julius's influence/interference/involvement, hence the plural title. There are photographs, manuscripts and a few artifacts in the museum's tiny rooms (pic left is the Hollywood section), but the music is the real draw. A wide selection is available to listen to, including some fascinating obscurities amongst the better known opera and film music.

The exhibition ends on 18 May, but a catalogue is available (price 22€), in German with English translation. Attached is a 16 track CD, also available separately (12€), which includes this 1952 recording of Elizabeth Schwarzkopf singing Glück das mir verblieb from Die tote Stadt:

Die tote Stadt is centred round an extended dream sequence which makes Paul, obsessed by memories of his dead wife Marie and wanting to believe she has been reincarnated as the dancer Marietta, finally realise that he needs to leave the past behind and move on with his life.

The production is designed around a simple uncluttered set, a room in Paul's house, just walls, chairs and a giant portrait of Marie (actually the blown-up face from John Singer Sargent's portrait of Miss Elsie Palmer, left).

As Paul falls asleep, the back wall disappears to reveal an identical room behind, with another Paul sitting there. Walls and floors slide around drunkenly as the dream progresses, but it's always anchored in the details of reality. This is no escapist fantasy but Paul's critical examination of his daily life through the liberating medium of the dream - psychoanalysis without the couch. The portrait pops up again and again, as does Paul's other precious relic of his wife, the dead Marie's 'braid' - here, presumably for the benefit of the back rows, a huge blonde tranny wig. It's all brilliantly simple - by homing in on a few key images, the fiddly hallucinatory details flash past and momentum is maintained.

Philippe Auguin's Vienna conducting debut hardly set the place alight, but it was solid enough, if rather stodgy, though he did manage some translucency in the densely textured scoring. His big mistake was to misjudge the acoustic. Vienna's shallow pit spreads and magnifies the sound, and he simply allowed the orchestra to play too loud too often, overwhelming every single one of the singers at various points. My own ears were physically hurting through most of the first scene, though I was halfway back, so I can only imagine the musicians were either earplugged or already half-deaf.

Even Klaus Florian Vogt, who normally powers through anything like a drill, struggled to be heard at times. His lyrical and enigmatic Paul anchored the production, unflagging despite his near-constant presence on stage. The tone was unfailingly beautiful, barely shaded - but perhaps a result of the passive characterisation imposed by the production. And if you want to know why most of my Vogt photos are fuzzy, it's because the floor was shaking with the applause at every curtain call he took.

In the triple role of the virtuous Marie, the carefree flapper 'real' Marietta and the monstrous 'dream/nightmare' Marietta, Angela Denoke proved what a wonderful and versatile actress she is. Not to mention fearless and completely lacking in vanity - she spent most of the evening bald, after throwing her blonde wig in Paul's face, a rebuke to his obsession with Marie's braid. Vocally, she had more power than sheer beauty, but this was no disadvantage with Auguin's ear-bending volume. She convinced dramatically and nailed all the notes, which was as much as could be asked of her in the circumstances.

Markus Eiche, Paul's friend Frank, had the smallest voice, and suffered most from the aural assault. He was more audible in his dream-sequence alterego of Fritz the Pierrot - so much so that I wonder if the set for the opening and closing scenes had some sort of sound-absorbing effect that accentuated M.Auguin's heavy metal approach. Janina Baechle's solid Brigitta was yet another impressive performance.

Whether next year's Covent Garden cast slot quite as perfectly into their roles remains to be seen, but with Ingo Metzmacher scheduled to conduct, maybe at least they'll be audible.

This is the Staatsoper's promo video - featuring the previous cast, which included Angela Denoke.